


Off Night

by Penknife



Category: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: Multi, On Tour Together, Polyamory, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27270235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: Lenny's burned out. Miriam is making excuses. Susie loves them both, and she is also tired of their shit.
Relationships: Lenny Bruce & Susie Myerson, Lenny Bruce (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)/Miriam "Midge" Maisel, Miriam "Midge" Maisel/Susie Myerson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Off Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_M](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/gifts).



The show was mercifully over, and Lenny had fucked off somewhere to smoke. Midge had gone outside and around the corner to smoke, out of some idea that she had ladylike standards to uphold. Usually Susie didn't care that this kept Midge from helping pack up, because packing up was not something Midge was good at helping with. Midge's idea of packing was nestling beautiful clothes into beautiful suitcases, not getting their gear the hell out of a theater before the bus left.

Tonight she'd had it with both of them. Susie stomped around the side of the theater and found Midge smoking a second cigarette, the only sign that Midge had any idea how fucked this tour was.

"So are we talking about how things are going?" Susie asked after a minute.

"They're going fine," Midge said, straightening her shoulders like she was balancing an invisible book on her head, or whatever bullshit exercises girls like her did to wind up with perfect posture. "Lenny's just having an off night."

"An off night is when you tell a joke about brisket and it turns out you're talking to the vegetarian club," Susie said. "He died on stage. We need a shovel."

"It might not have been his best set."

"Do you think?"

"He was trying," Midge said, in a tone that made Susie grind her teeth.

"He was not trying. That was spectacular not trying. In the dictionary, under 'not trying,' there's that set. And the thing that bothers me more than being on tour with somebody who's phoning it in is being on tour with somebody who's making excuses for them."

"We are talking about _the_ Lenny Bruce," Midge said.

"You can't say 'the' about someone you're fucking. That's weird."

"I'm not having sex with him because he's the Lenny Bruce. I'm having sex with him because he's our Lenny Bruce. But he is, still, the Lenny Bruce."

"After that set, he's the late Lenny Bruce."

"Do I get a nice funeral?" Lenny said, slouching around the side of the theater. He looked rough, but he'd looked rough since they started the tour. Midge gave him one of her genuinely sweet looks, like she wanted to kiss it better. It was kind of cute to watch, except that they had to talk about this, or they were all going to wind up working in dinner theater hell.

"How about resurrecting yourself instead?"

"It'll be better on our next stop," Midge said. Susie wasn't sure Midge had any real idea where that was, but it didn't matter. It was a stage, where an audience was expecting to be entertained.

"Stop giving him a break because he's good in bed."

"Does she tell you I'm good in bed?" Lenny's mouth quirked sideways.

"Yes, I do," Midge said, looking momentarily self-satisfied.

"She tells me you're good in bed," Lenny said to Susie, still looking wry.

"She sure isn't dating me for my charm."

"This isn't just about the sex," Midge said. "For either of you. I thought you knew that."

"We are not having that conversation," Susie said. "We are going to talk about what happened on stage in there if it fucking kills us."

"I think Lenny just needs you to be supportive," Midge said. "It was an off night."

"I think Lenny is burned out," Susie said.

"I think Lenny is finding it a little strange to be talked about like he's not here," Lenny said. "But I could be wrong."

"Very funny. If you want to be funny, you could have, I don't know, done some kind of comedy routine in there?"

"He's not burned out," Midge said. "You're not burned out, are you? I mean, we're just getting started with this tour. I still even remember which city we're in. All right, the bus does smell persistently of feet, but from the buses I've seen, that's one of the better options for a scent profile."

"It's been a long time since I remembered which city we were in," Lenny said.

"If you tried drinking less before you went on stage, it might help," Susie said. Lenny looked at her like he was waiting for a punch line. "That wasn't a joke."

"I was trying to get in the mood."

"Getting themselves in the mood is what married couples do before they screw. You've been doing this too long to have to be in the mood to tell jokes. It's a job."

"A great job," Midge said.

"Listen to you," Lenny said, sounding almost unbearably fond. "The ultimate trouper. Not even the smell of feet puts you off going on."

"I always want to go on. You always want to go on."

"I want to want to go on," Lenny said. "Sometimes I want to want to want to."

"That is a lot of 'want tos,'" Midge said, looking tense around the mouth.

"Actually, it's a lot of not wanting to," Lenny said.

"I think the man could use a break," Susie said. "You know, a vacation?" Maybe a long vacation, she thought, the kind that begins to sound like 'doing something else for a living,' but she liked the man too much to say it.

"You didn't have to come on this tour," Midge said.

"And lose the chance to perform with you?"

"Is this about the performing, or about the … performing?" Susie asked. "Because it is actually possible to have sex in hotel rooms and ride around on buses that smell like feet without also getting up on stage and telling jokes that aren't funny."

"That is news to me," Lenny said, completely deadpan.

"Of course, I want you to stay on the tour, even if you don't want to perform," Midge said. It was clear from her tone that she had no idea why a person might not want to perform. Susie loved Midge, but sometimes she was so freaking young.

"And I want you to stay on the tour because otherwise her sexual appetites are frankly going to be beyond what I have the energy to handle," Susie said.

"Oh, you love it," Midge said.

"I also like sleep. You know, that thing you do in a bed that doesn't involve sucking or humping?"

"Well, that's news to me," Midge said.

Susie turned her attention to Lenny. "We can say that you're recovering from some kind of weird accident. You fell down the bus stairs. You got a social disease. You ate a bad fruit cocktail."

"Can't we just say 'exhaustion'?" Midge said.

"That means drunk," Susie said. "I don't know if we want to tell everybody he can't perform because he's too drunk."

"I rarely have that problem," Lenny said.

"This is not the night to make that joke."

Midge was looking at Lenny like she actually saw him for the first time that evening. "You're funnier right now than you were onstage."

"I'm tired," he said. Midge looked like she was waiting for the punch line to that, and then realizing that there wasn't one.

"I hear there's a bed in the hotel. You could even visit mine and … what did Susie call it, 'sleep'?"

"It's a weird custom," Susie said. "Sometimes people actually sleep in each other's beds, instead of just fucking there. It's friendly."

"I thought it was just that you couldn't stay awake after we were done," Midge said. "I didn't realize you were being friendly."

"Never tell anyone that. I like people thinking I hate everybody."

"We're onto you," Lenny said, with a sideways glance at Susie. "And, you know." He made a face, pretending to fight with himself about whether to speak the next words. "Thank you."

"What are you thanking me for? I just busted your ass."

"My ass thanks you."

"I do not want to hear from your ass," Susie said.

"Can we go? Are we packed?" Midge asked.

"We are. How could that have happened? It is a literal mystery."

Midge gave her that smile that made Susie forgive her for too many things. "I don't deserve you."

"You really don't."

"I'm intrigued by this 'sleep' idea," Lenny said. "I have distant memories of liking it."

Midge hooked her arm through his. "Susie says you do it in a bed."

"That's ringing bells."

"Get your asses on the bus," Susie said, but not nearly as sternly as the two of them deserved.


End file.
